Why Don't You Just Die!

Between violent atrocities meted out with shotguns, power tools and the like, the exclamatory debut feature from Russian writer/director/editor Kirill Sokolov plays bracingly fast and loose with audience expectations. The film starts as a revenge-driven chamber piece, involving a thick-set detective named Andrey (Vitaliy Khaev) and the younger, hammer-wielding Matvey (Aleksandr Kuznetsov), lover of Andrey's estranged daughter Olya (Evgeniya Kregzhde). After a pulverising brawl between the men in Andrey's close-confines apartment, a twist-laden tale of abuse, blackmail, betrayal and cop corruption unfolds. Extreme brutality and cartoonish exuberance merge in this carnival of chaos, with anti-patriarchal subtexts entwining with heightened elements of satire, farce, action and tragedy. What he lacks in subtlety, Sokolov makes up for in punkish brio, brash style and puckish resourcefulness: even Andrey's telly becomes a weapon during the apocalyptic dust-ups.